Audiophilepure

The Edition XS sounds very clear, focused, fast, detailed and natural with a good sense of warmth and body. The headphone ticks a lot of boxes, especially for its price, and I personally couldn’t find an obvious weakness in its overall presentation.

It has good tonality, resolution, imaging, and proper texture and transparency. For 500 bucks, this is basically a flawless headphone by my experience. It present a pretty neutral sound overall with slightly energetic mids and bright treble.

The BRAVURA treads lightly over the same ground, benefitting from that subtle DSP; that ‘modified pseudo-diffuse field’ frequency response curve, which already created a remarkably natural presentation. Having heard what the Sonoma M1 can do, this was the key ‘if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’ part of the overall performance and remains unchanged between Sonoma M1 Headphone and BRAVURA. This yields an even greater consistency to a system that is already inherently consistent, but the combination of BRAVURA and the DSP on the Sonoma M1 Amp has an additional level of clarity and tonal precision that most other headphone systems fail to get close to achieving. This comes over as sublime clarity and extension to voices, such as that of Joyce DiDonato [Stella De Napoli, Erato]. Here, she sounds on peak form, which is impressive because she always sounds on peak form, but the BRAVURA just lets her get on with singing with absolute clarity and extension. A true delight… as it was with the Sonoma M1 Headphone.

The driver housing is made of aviation aluminum material with precise CNC machining with the precise placement of the holes determined by hours of testing and experimentation to maximize linearity and uniformity of production.

Gold color embroidery thread and soft goatskin are combined together to create an ergonomic and comfortable headband with a unique and exquisite design. The detachable earpads are also made from goatskin incorporating a memory-foam interior to produce an ergonomic and special-shaped earpad that matches the ears perfectly and prevents sound leakage.

The headband brackets and gimbals are made of aviation aluminum for high strength, durability, and low weight.

Hifiman used leather and a nicely padded memory foam headband on the R9 and I must say that it is very comfortable. Additionally, the skeleton of the R9’s headband is steel and features a good bending capability. Overall, I found it very comfortable and there were occasions when I used it for over 12 hours in a single day. Furthermore, the earcups of the R9 remind me of Fostex’s TH-900. The TH-900 had these wonderful dark pearly red cups made of Japanese Cherry Birch. The Hifiman HE-R9’s ear cups also feature a similar red to the TH-900 but are slightly lighter in color. 

The shapes of the earcups are unique and Hifiman states that this shape was specially designed for the driver, taking the acoustic properties into account. Moving on to the ear pads, well, these are one of the most comfortable pads that I used in my plus 10-year audiophile journey. The padding is thick, the memory foam is comfy and the clamping force is perfect. It is not too strong, not too light, just right. The pads cover my ears completely and provide very good isolation during listening sessions.

How good is the Arya Stealth?! Waw! It isn’t cheap or available to everyone but the performance for the price is highly remarkable.

The Arya Stealth’s tuning is very good. It’s pleasing, yet technically strong as well as musical and exciting. The Arya Stealth always has good body, presence, impact and depth. It’s very easy to understand why this headphone is getting so many recommendations. It’s an absolute award winner and in this price category, the Arya Stealth is hard to beat.

The altogether more considered sound of Mountains by Prince & The Revolution [Paisley Park] is no less compelling in the Elite’s hands. Like all the best Prince songs, Mountains sounds like a high-class demo – and the Elite gives the spaces, the absences and the silences that constitute a big part of this recording full expression. The level of bite and drive they summon is deeply impressive – the steroid-assisted horn section has never sounded more clipped or austere, the vocal has never sounded more impassioned, the drag on the kick drum has never sounded so deliberate. Whatever the intentions of a recording are, it seems, the Elite have no trouble understanding them.

The Bluemini R2R sounds very good. HIFIMAN says a lot of work went into the custom-designed DAC and listening to the same tracks I auditioned with the wired hookup, I was hard-pressed to hear a difference. I could detect a very slight difference when auditioning the highest quality tracks in my collection. I found a slightly compressed dynamic range and a very slight reduction in the highs. Having said that, it was the best Bluetooth sound I’ve heard.